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Ging sits cross-legged in front of the recorder. The cassette is spinning. An oil lamp casts a dim light across the room.
Ging stares at the device. He spent hours preparing this message, choosing his words, finding the right tone. A message for a son he might not see again for ten, fifteen years. A message he’ll only be allowed to hear if he becomes a Hunter.
He presses record.
“Yo, Gon... so you actually made it. You're a Hunter. Do you want to see me?”
He pauses. Then he continues, his voice hardening.
“I don’t want to see you. I don’t know how to face you... I gave up being your father for selfish reasons. Hunters are selfish people who set everything aside to reach what they want.”
His voice doesn’t shake. It’s the truth, after all. No need to dress it up.
“I’m not a good guy.”
He adds the final instructions, then stops the recording. The cassette clicks to a halt. Ging takes it out and turns it over between his fingers. A small rectangular object. Ten years of silence compressed onto magnetic tape.
He puts the cassette into the box he prepared, next to the ring and the Greed Island memory card. He closes the lid and lays his hands flat on the wood.
It’s done.
He hears small footsteps in the hallway. The door creaks open. A head of messy black hair appears in the doorway.
Gon.
The boy is wearing his blue pajamas, the ones with the fish. He’s two years old. His eyes are wide open despite the late hour, and he’s holding his hands behind his back, chin tucked in like he’s hiding a treasure.
“Dada!”
Ging feels a pang in his chest at the sound of that word. Gon would never call him that again after tonight.
He walks into the room, bare feet on the floorboards, and stops in front of his father. He holds out his hands.
A stone. Flat, gray, about the size of a child’s palm. Ging takes it and tilts it toward the light. On its surface, the imprint of a shell. A fossil.
“Found it,” Gon says. “For you.”
Ging looks at his son. The boy is smiling, proud of his offering. He must have picked it up on the beach, or among the rocks near the cove.
Ging closes his fingers around the stone. He pulls Gon toward him, lifts him up, settles him on his knees. The boy weighs almost nothing. His hair smells like soap and grass.
“It’s a beautiful gift.”
His voice is softer than usual.
Gon rests his head against his father’s chest. His eyelids droop halfway. Sleep finally catches up with him.
Ging strokes his son’s cheek with his thumb. The skin is warm, soft. He feels the beat of his son’s heart against his own chest, fast and light.
In a few hours, he’ll leave. And Gon will stay here, on this island, with Mito and their grandmother Abe. He’ll grow up without him and learn to walk through the forest, to swim in the sea, to fish.
Gon’s eyes close completely. His breathing evens out.
Ging doesn’t move. He stays there, his son against him, the fossil stone in his hand.
“I know you threw the case.”
Mito’s voice. She’s standing in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest.
Ging lifts his head. He doesn’t answer.
“If you really wanted to, you could’ve kept your parental rights!”
She’s right. Ging let it happen. He showed up to court without a lawyer, answered the questions without conviction, didn’t challenge the accusations of negligence. He wanted to lose.
“I’m not a good father,” he says with a crooked smile. “You said it yourself.”
Mito’s nostrils flare. Her gaze hardens.
Ging lowers his eyes to Gon. The boy is still asleep, unaware of the tension in the room.
“If you leave,” Mito says, “I swear I’ll do everything I can to make sure Gon never sees you again. I’ll tell him you’re dead!”
“That’ll be his decision.”
Mito steps forward. Her fists clench. She breathes hard through her nose. Ging knows that expression. She wants to hit him. She already has, on the day he came back carrying Gon, without his mother. She slapped him so hard his head spun.
But she can’t hit him now. Not with Gon asleep between them.
She turns on her heel. Her footsteps echo down the hallway, sharp and fast. Her bedroom door slams shut.
Gon stirs against Ging’s chest. His small fingers clutch the fabric of his scarf.
Ging remains still. The fossil stone is still in his hand. He slips it into his pocket.
Ging stands at the foot of Gon’s bed. The boy is sleeping on his back, arms spread, mouth slightly open. The nightlight bathes his face in an orange glow.
The bed is sized for a child his age, with wooden rails to keep him from falling out. The blanket shows blue whales on a white background. Gon picked it himself at the market a few days earlier. He’d pointed at it, shouting “whale! whale!” until Ging gave in.
Ging bends down. He brushes his son’s cheek with his fingertips.
The thought of not watching him grow up unsettles him more than he expected. He thought it would be easy. Leaving, like he always does. Following the next lead, continuing to explore. Gon would be safe here, with people who loved him and would take care of him.
But now, standing in this room that smells of clean laundry and the sea, what he’s about to do feels different. Heavier.
“Are you sure this is what you want?”
The voice comes from the hallway. Ging recognizes his grandmother Abe’s tone. She stands in the shadows, wrapped in her night shawl.
He doesn’t turn around.
“I’ll admit I originally planned to leave him with you temporarily,” he says. “A few months, just long enough to take care of some things. But I’m glad Mito did everything she could to keep Gon here. He needs to grow up somewhere stable.”
“You know you could visit him in secret. Nothing’s stopping you.”
Ging shakes his head.
“No. I trust you. I know you’ll take good care of him.”
He finally turns to Abe. The old woman looks at him with tired eyes, without judgment.
“And besides,” Ging adds, “when he’s old enough to become a Hunter, he’ll come looking for me.”
Abe nods. She doesn’t insist. She never has. That’s why he can talk to her.
She walks away down the hallway. Her footsteps are silent on the floorboards.
Ging turns back to the bed. Gon has shifted in his sleep. He’s holding his pillow now, brows furrowed as if he’s having an intense dream.
He knows Gon will come find him. He knows his son will become a Hunter, because he’s seen the way the boy looks at the world, with that insatiable curiosity that drives him to understand everything, to explore everything. It’s the same hunger that’s lived in Ging since childhood.
But he also knows that after what he’s doing today, he doesn’t deserve to see Gon again.
What could he say to him, the day they stand face to face? That he left him on this island out of convenience? That he didn’t feel like being responsible for him? That he preferred chasing mysteries over watching his son grow up?
Ging imagines the scene. Gon, a teenager or an adult, standing in front of him. The same eyes, the same face. And that inevitable question: why?
He has no answer. No good answer, anyway.
And yet, he doesn’t regret anything.
Staying here, playing the role of a family man, pretending this life would be enough for him… it’s beyond his strength. He can’t afford to lose years raising Gon instead of pursuing what he’s been chasing his entire life.
He tried to do both. It almost cost Gon his life, and cost Ging his own sanity.
Ging stays there a little longer. Then he leaves the room without a sound.
The day breaks over Whale Island.
Ging walks toward the pier, his bag slung over his shoulder. The cool air smells of sea spray. Seagulls cry overhead. The village is still asleep, but the fishermen are already on their boats, preparing their nets for the morning outing.
He stops halfway down the path.
Part of him wonders whether this game of hide-and-seek with his son was worth it. Whether it justifies his absence. Whether Gon will understand, one day, why his father left him.
Ging is no longer his legal guardian. But he’s still his father. That, no one can take away from him.
For two years, Ging raised Gon alone. The boy never left his side. Always in his arms, or clinging to his leg, or toddling after him along the world’s paths. Ging took him everywhere. Into the forest, onto the cliffs, along the streams. He showed him animal tracks, edible plants, the stars in the summer sky.
But he also dragged him into places no child should ever see. Gon had come close to death more times than Ging cared to count.
Mito is right. He’s not a good father.
If she were still here, she would kill him for what he’s about to do. She would drag him back home by the hair, screaming that he has no right to abandon their son, even if it meant tearing out his eyes and breaking his ribs to get the point across.
Mito is like her, in a way. The same anger, the same determination to protect what she holds dear. If Mito had been a Hunter, she might have managed to stop him. By making him understand, through violence, that he had no choice.
Ging smiles. A part of him would have liked that. That’s what she would have done.
But she is gone.
Ging resumes walking. The pier comes into view at the end of the path, its planks worn by salt, its ropes coiled neatly. The captain’s boat is moored at the end, its black hull gleaming in the morning light.
The captain is on deck, his pipe between his teeth. He spots Ging and raises a hand in greeting.
Ging has known him since childhood. A gruff, quiet man who used to take him fishing when he wanted to escape household chores. Years later, he was the one who revealed to Ging that he was a Hunter. The first Hunter Ging ever met. The one who gave him the idea to take the exam.
Ging steps onto the pier. His boots echo against the wood.
The captain comes down the gangway to meet him. He takes a puff from his pipe. The smell of dark tobacco mixes with the scent of the tide. He studies Ging through narrowed eyes.
The captain nods. He doesn’t ask any questions. He reaches out, pats Ging’s shoulder with familiarity.
Ging wishes he’d hit him. That he’d tell him he’s an unworthy father. That he’d force him back up the path, back to the house, to the room where his son is still sleeping.
But the captain does none of that, as if he understands. As if he approves.
Ging doesn’t need understanding. He doesn’t need support. He knows his choice is selfish. Hunter or not, father or not, he’s doing what he’s always done: he’s running away.
He boards without looking back.
The boat pulls away from the pier. Ging stands at the bow, his face turned toward the open sea.
The ocean is calm this morning, flat and featureless. The waves are barely visible, and the sky is a dull, uniform blue, without clouds. As if the world itself were taking pity on him. A vicious, cruel mockery nonetheless. One he deserves.
Ging takes the stone out of his pocket. His son’s gift. He looks at it for a long moment.
What a pathetic man he is.